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Former fugitive and computer antivirus software tycoon, John
McAfee says we are allowing technology to invade our lives in
ways that alarmingly erode our privacy and expectation of such.

In a surprise appearance at the Def Con hacking conference in Las
Vegas yesterday, McAfee said “certain people within Google… would
like us to believe that if we have nothing to hide, we should not
mind if everybody knows everything that we do.”

He warned that such “intrusions” threatened our freedom, and
would reduce human behavior to the “least common denominator,
those behaviors which no one would find offensive.”

McAfee blames this erosion of privacy on laziness and our desire
for comfort and safety.

"We want ease of living, We want comfort in our life," McAfee
said. "We’d rather be safe secure and comfortable than actually
live and get out there and suffer and see what life is all
about."

McAfee has often been portrayed in the media as a paranoid and
eccentric personality. In a well-publicized incident in 2012,
McAfee fled his home in Belize after police attempted to question
him in connection with the murder of his neighbor, another
American expatriate. McAfee says he has always had an aversion to
law enforcement and was afraid the police would kill him.

At the same time, Facebook has taken heat for
conducting an experiment that sought to manipulate the emotions
of its users without their knowledge. And recently, dating site
OkCupid revealed that it, too, experiments on its users. In fact,
its founder
said that anyone who uses the Internet is the "subject of
hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site."

“What I want to talk about is something very dear to my heart.
Privacy and the eroded nature of privacy in our lives today.
Google, or at least certain people within Google -- I will not
mention names, because I am not a rude gentleman -- would like us
to believe that if we have nothing to hide, we should not mind if
everybody knows everything that we do.

I have to take serious issue with that. If everybody knew
everything about everybody else what would human behavior become?
We would be limited to the least common denominator of human
behavior, those behaviors which no one would find offensive.

You need to think this through. I hear people saying over and
over, 'I don’t care, I’ve got nothing to hide.’ It’s not a matter
of hiding anything. Here’s the issue. Unless you’re willing to
stand up, to take a stand, to do something, we’re all lost.

We have done this because we’re lazy. We want ease of living. We
want comfort in our life. We’d rather be safe secure and
comfortable than actually live and get out there and suffer and
see what life is all about. I’m as guilty as you are. We cannot
have intrusions into our lives and still have freedom. And
freedom is all I have. And it’s all you have, if you think about
it.”